This invention relates to an applicator for applying paint to the surface of a painter pad.
A painter pad is a sponge like pad having a nap surface which is attached to a handle and used in lieu of a brush or paint roller to apply paint or other liquid to a wall or other surface. Paint can be applied to the pad by carefully dipping the pad slightly into a body of paint contained in the well of a conventional paint tray or other container. However this is not a particularly desirable way to apply paint to the pad because in many cases the pad takes on too much paint so that when the pad is stroked across the wall to be painted an excessive thickness of paint is applied to the wall. Consequently the wall area covered by a given volume of paint is relatively small.
There are prior applicators which attempt to avoid this problem. Invariably they comprise a paint container having a cylindrical applicator rotatively mounted transversely in the container. With the container filled with paint, the painter pad is drawn across the roller. This tends to rotate the roller so that paint is applied to successive circumaxial areas of the roller surface, which paint is then transferred to the painter pad.
While these prior applicators work reasonably well they still have drawbacks which render them, at best, inconvenient to use. More particularly, the rollers used in these prior applicators are invariably cylinders of large diameter so that diametrically opposite portions of the roller surface will be immersed in and project above the liquid in the container both when the container is full and when it is nearly empty. Therefore in order to keep the overall size and weight of the applicator within reasonable bounds, the cylinder is made only slightly longer than the smaller dimension of the rectangular painter pad so that the pad has to be drawn across the roller sideways. Consequently in order to load the pad with paint uniformly over its entire area, the user has to stroke the pad back and forth several times on the roller with the roller making several complete turns. Needless to say, this is tedious and time consuming.
Furthermore, when the prior applicators are used to apply thixotropic paint to the painter pad, the paint, being pudding-like, inhibits rotation of the roller and the pad itself tends to skid or slide over the surface of the roller rather than to turn the roller. Resultantly, the roller does not always present a freshly coated surface to the pad as the pad is stroked over the roller. This sometimes results in inadequate loading of the roller. Attempts to alleviate this problem by forming lengthwise ribs on the roller that "bits" into the pad surface to provide sufficient traction to turn the roller have not proven to be a satisfactory solution. This is because the ribs themselves interfere with the uniform application of paint to the entire surface of the pad so that the pad, in turn, does not apply the paint uniformly to the wall or other surface being painted.
Finally these prior paint applicators tend to be relatively expensive and they are dedicated exclusively to applying paint to pads so that their paint containers cannot be used with paint rollers.